Well, they've been building buttloads of stuff, and the rest goes into the "food" they export to us! ;)
Here’s hoping that they didn’t use Chinese cement in all of that. there is some really low quality stuff out there.
I bet a lot of it went into the “Three Gorges Dam”. A disaster waiting to happen.
Infrastructure-wise, they still have a long way to go until the same percentage of their people have clean running water and toilets.
After tearing everything down in the culture revolution they had to rebuild almost everything.
Cement was over $16 per bag at the nearest lumberyard only a few days ago. Beware the gouging at main street building supplies and hardware stores.
But is it quality cement?
You mean concrete?
Recalled Maggi noodles to feed cement plants’ furnaces
About 27,420 tonnes of Maggi noodles, under recall process, will end up in furnaces of cement plants across the country
http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/maggi-heads-to-cement-plants-115061600034_1.html
Remember all the ghost cities?
Fixed it for ya.
No charge.
Cement-making is very energy intensive (see below).
Do the enviro-heads know about this? Have they raised a major stink over the red Chinese destroying the planet by causing climate change?
No, I didn’t think so.
“Cement accounts for 83% of total energy use in the production of non-metallic minerals and 94% of CO2 emissions. Energy represents 20% to 40% of the total cost of cement production. The production of cement clinker from limestone and chalk by heating limestone to temperatures above 950°C is the main energy consuming process. Portland cement, the most widely used cement type, contains 95% cement clinker. Large amounts of electricity are used grinding the raw materials and finished cement.
The clinker-making process also emits CO2 as a by-product during the calcination of limestone. These process emissions are unrelated to energy use and account for about 3.5% of CO2 emissions worldwide and for 57% of the total CO2 emissions from cement production. Emissions from limestone calcination cannot be reduced through energy-efficiency measures or fuel substitution, but can be diminished through production of blended cement and raw material selection.”
It is possible to use an ordinary twist drill to make a hole in Chinese concrete. They don’t seem to understand that the water/cement ratio is fixed by chemistry. The Chinese also do not test the concrete used in the construction of bridges, dams, and road to verify that it meets specifications. Well, they don’t actually use any sort of specifications for concrete.
This presupposes that chinese accounting and chinese statistics coincide with reality. How likely is that?